Billion Year Walk Volunteers

We are falling short. Over 40% of volunteer workshifts have yet to be filled. Spread the Word: We need volunteers to sign up for multiple time slots and get friends and family to sign up. We need volunteers to sign up for the 2019 Billion Year Walk around Oakland’s Lake Merritt on Saturday, July 27, and for positions on July 20 & 21.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the National Center for Science Education, the Frederick E. Hart Foundation for Educational Opportunity, and the Bay Area Skeptics.

We have positions for science docent volunteers, and we have positions for other volunteers.

Minimum qualifications for science docents:
• Degree or equivalent in Geology, Biology, Paleontology, Climatology, or similar
• Good verbal communication skills

Minimum qualifications for other volunteers:
• Appreciation for the importance of good science education
• Pulse

People from all segments of our community will be walking around Lake Merritt throughout the day as families, couples, and individuals. They will read signposts stationed around the Lake with information on the natural history of Earth during the last billion years. Each of the 42 signs has one or more QR codes, mostly for Wikipedia pages. The goals of the Billion Year Walk are to provide the general public with a science experience and to introduce them to Deep Time.

FIRST: Familiarize yourself with tasks and workshift times using these two docs

Volunteer Packet

Staffing Spreadsheet

SECOND: Signup for the workshifts you want. There were over 70 workshifts available before people began taking them. Take as many workshifts as you can without time overlaps.

SignUpGenius

THIRD: Get your friends to also sign up. Post a few flyers where they will do the most good.

Flyer

FOURTH: Do not be late for the 9:30am meeting on Saturday, July 27 at the Rotary Science Center. (You already know where that is because you read the Volunteer Packet.)

Questions? Text or call David Almandsmith at 510-304-4071

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

FOCUS: Becoming better consumers of information

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics who live in various locations around the oblate spherical planet Earth.

Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday December 25, 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-8)

HOW: Online. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

SkepTalk

Ann Gibbons

WHAT: Lone Survivors: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Us

In the past decade, new studies of ancient DNA from fossils have shown that, until as recently as 40,000 years ago, our ancestors shared the planet with two close relatives, the Neanderthals and a mysterious group called the Denisovans. Both of those groups became extinct, but traces of their DNA remain in the genomes of modern humans. Meanwhile, researchers are discovering diverse types of human ancestors who were living at the same time in the same fossil sites millions of years ago, suggesting that we were never alone—that there were always other types of hominins alive in Africa and elsewhere on the planet until recently. Join us for a discussion with Ann Gibbons about new research that has changed perceptions of the Neanderthals, shed new light on the mysterious Denisovans, and our place in the human family tree.

WHO: Ann Gibbons is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine and the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, which was a finalist for the LA Times best science and technology book. She also has taught science writing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and written about human evolution for National Geographic, SLATE, Smithsonian magazine and other publications. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, she was also a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a science writing fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

She was awarded the 2019 American Geophysical Union’s Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, the 2018 and 2013 National Academy of Sciences Communication Awards for best magazine/newspaper article; the 2014 Society of American Archaeology Gene S. Stuart Award; and the 2012 Anthropology in Media Award from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) for a decade’s worth of stories on human origins and evolution.

WHEN: Thursday January 9 at 6:30PM PT (GMT -8)

HOW: (details coming soon)